Jon Ralph: Richmond’s off-field distractions in Gold Coast bubble have turned into soap opera
The COVID-19 breaches and strip club brawl are just the latest in a long line of off-field issues that have plagued Richmond’s season in the bubble drama that rivals an episode of The Kardashians, Jon Ralph writes.
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Richmond’s season has morphed into a bizarre TV episode of “Kardashians Do The Gold Coast”.
The wild child rookie and the emerging ruckman getting into boozy scuffles outside strip clubs then banished to lockdown Victoria on the next flight home.
The senior coach involved in petty squabbles with the media as he attempts to boast about past glories.
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And the wives of the club boss and the captain exchanging shots at 20 paces after a “beauty treatment” gone wrong, all of it played out across the gossip pages.
Yet like the filthy rich Kardashians, so far the Teflon Tigers have shown absolutely no indication it is about to ruin their shot at a dynasty.
The newest juicy episode involved Richmond youngsters Sydney Stack and Callum Coleman-Jones basically attempting to break every possible COVID-19 rule set by the AFL.
And in the process gave off the worst possible perception: that the AFL could stampede into Queensland with wives and families, mocking COVID-19 safety when they weren’t lounging by the pool sipping a cocktail.
If stumbling out of a strip club at 3.30am and heading to the local kebab joint isn’t the perfect place to find a drunken scuffle then it’s hard to know where else is.
The penalties came swiftly and with a premium that showed the AFL is aware its presence in this state is on a knife’s edge: 10 match bans for the pair and a $100,000 fine for Richmond.
AFL boss Gillon McLachlan had only just defended bringing his own family into the hub as drones hovered overhead on Thursday, with Queensland media painting the hard quarantine centre as a party hub.
Say what you want about the AFL’s attempt to keep its season alive, but even McLachlan couldn’t defend the AFL’s treatment while families missed lifesaving treatment because of locked down borders.
So at the very least now Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk gets to come down hard on the AFL.
She tweeted on Friday: “AFL players caught breaking COVID-19 rules should be sent home. Queensland won’t tolerate it.”
And the league gets to boast it used a big stick on the latest covidiots.
But the AFL wasn’t the only one betrayed.
Richmond has joined Geelong as an AFL club desperate to keep all of its coaches together in this COVID-19 storm while rivals have jettisoned as many as five assistants.
Already, Richmond will have to make impossibly hard decisions on how to cut more than $3 million out of its cap for next year.
Before they get on the plane to be sent home Coleman-Jones and Stack will likely have to look a staffer or coach in the eye, aware there isn’t money in the football cap for that person next year because of their actions.
The AFL Coaches Association is set to at least ask the question of the AFL why it is that a coach, or physio or analyst will be penalised for the idiocy of players.
Richmond has only just boasted of hitting 100,000 members — many of whom have seen exactly one home game this year — and yet what a slap in the face for them to be basically paying that fine despite all they have sacrificed this year.
As for the Tigers, the list of distractions just continues to add up by the week.
What other club could have the chief executive’s wife and the captain’s wife effectively at loggerheads in a war of words over Trent Cotchin threatening to leave the Queensland hub and yet play as if nothing of the sort had eventuated?
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Make no mistake, teammates were disgruntled at the events of that week and the way the Cotchins were effectively given a “wing” of the club’s headquarters with extensive renovations.
Yet presumably in the Tigers’ open forum those events have been addressed, compartmentalised and put in the rear view mirror.
As Nick Riewoldt told Fox Footy on Sunday, at the first hint Richmond’s exceptional form is about to drop off, they will be used again to question the club’s morale.
“You just wonder if the pressure does come,” Riewoldt said.
“At the moment they are playing good footy. We all know it is hard to move on from those things when you’re winning but as soon as the pressure does come (it could change).
“You look for reasons. At the start of the year with West Coast we were looking. Are they not enjoying the hubs?
“This is embarrassing now. For the captain of the football club, his standing in the game couldn’t have been higher in the last three years.”
Originally published as Jon Ralph: Richmond’s off-field distractions in Gold Coast bubble have turned into soap opera